


Brief Encounters

by ArtDeco



Category: The Halcyon (TV)
Genre: 1920s AU, First World War AU, M/M, Missing Scene, Modern AU, Post-Canon, Secret Relationship, Victorian, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25859890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtDeco/pseuds/ArtDeco
Summary: A series of seven vignettes featuring our favourite boys - some silly, some serious, some slightly sexy, and each exactly 1k in length.Including: Bletchley Park, modern AU, post-war, 1920s AU, First World War AU, missing scene from canon, and Victorian AU.
Relationships: Toby Hamilton/Adil Joshi
Comments: 43
Kudos: 28





	1. A Quiet Weekend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Toby's promotion takes him out of London, he finds Adil only too keen to reconnect.

* * *

“How’s your Spanish?”

“Non-existent,” Toby said without looking up. “You’re better off asking Weston once he’s back from lunch.”

“No fear. He’ll only go on about his year in Barcelona.”

“Salamanca.”

Oxley shrugged. “All Catholic, isn’t it?” He stuffed the memo into his pocket. “I’ll run it up to Translations in a bit.”

Toby flipped through the dictionary. The windows of the hut were uncurtained, and the sun was warming the exposed finger of neck between his hair and the collar of his shirt. There was laughter outside and, further away, the chew of tyres across gravel. If he closed his eyes he could be back in his study at Eton.

“Haven’t had Spanish before,” he said. _Schlafen, schlagen, schlau_ …

“Supposed to be neutral, aren’t they? Clearly Guernica’s now water under the bridge – ”

 _Schlauchboot_. Dinghy.

“ – If there were any bridges left after the Luftwaffe finished with them – ”

He sat back in his chair, rolling his shoulders to ease the ache in his neck. The memo, decoded and now fully translated, was on paper so thin he could see the grain of the desk through it.

“ – And if they’re expecting us to decode Spanish now then _I_ ’ll expect a proper bloody dictionary, not these dog-eared rags they’ve filched from the girls’ school – ”

“Take this one up when you go.” He reached for his cigarettes. “C.O. will want it for the Admiralty.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Eighteen British picked up from dinghy,” he read out, lighting up. “Fifteen degrees south, twenty-nine degrees west. Heil Hitler.”

“Didn’t know there was a German word for dinghy.”

“No, well, you can thank the dog-eared rags.”

Oxley got up and took the memo across to their map of the Atlantic, which was so vast they’d had to nail it at the corners to keep it on the wall.

“They’ll be from that destroyer taken out yesterday. The co-ordinates match up almost exactly.”

Toby thought again how glad he was that Freddie hadn’t gone into the Navy. “What’ll happen to them?”

“POW camp, I s’pose. Poor bastards.”

Oxley crammed the memo into another pocket, and was halfway out the door when he poked his head back in.

“You’re off this weekend, aren’t you? Weston said you’ve got a pal coming up.”

Toby took a drag. “Just someone from home.”

“Why aren’t you meeting him in London? Bugger all to do ‘round here.”

He reached for the next memo, smile shielded. “We fancy a quiet weekend.”

***

He didn’t get away until after six, but the train was late, and when he reached the station Adil had only been waiting for ten minutes. They strapped his bag to the bicycle and took it in turns to push it up the hill, through the trickle of people heading past them for the Euston train. The air was thick and close, and at the top of the hill they took off their hats and hung one on each handlebar.

The house was a neat, narrow slice of red brick, squeezed between the jeweller’s and the post office, untouched by war but for the tape criss-crossing the windows.

“I told the landlady you’re a clean-living, teetotalling city boy in need of fresh air,” he said as he led him upstairs. “She’s visiting her sister in Margate. And Mr Bow works nights – he rents the other room – so we’ll have the house to ourselves.” He unlocked his door and stepped back to let Adil pass. “There’s milk if you want tea – and I’d better show you the bathroom, there’s a bit of a knack to the hot tap – ”

Adil kissed him brusquely on the mouth. The door kicked shut and then hands were at his shoulders, peeling off his jacket, unknotting his tie, working through the buttons on his shirt.

“I need a bath.” His underarms were damp and his hair wanted combing, and he ought to have a shave before dinner –

Adil slid his thin, warm hands beneath his vest. “Let me take care of you,” he said, and Toby remembered that this was the joy of him, how little combing and shaving and wrinkled, ill-fitting clothes mattered to him.

“Missed you,” he murmured. He had ached with it. “Thank you for your obscene letters.”

He felt the vibrations of Adil’s chest as he laughed. “I did warn you to open them in private.”

Adil drew him to the bed, past the pile of blankets the landlady had left on the settee, and Toby lay back and watched sure hands open his collar, wind up his shirtsleeves.

“It’s strange having you in my bed in mufti.”

He reached up to pull him down to him but Adil took his wrists and pressed him back, index fingers stroking across his palms.

“Let me take care of you, _janaam_ ,” he said again, and Toby let himself be kissed, enjoy the weight, the solidity of him.

The telephone rang beside the bed.

“It might be work.” He flexed his wrists, for the feel of Adil’s steady grip.

“I’ll give you back to them Sunday night.”

“It might be urgent.”

Adil kissed the corner of his mouth, and slid Toby’s arms up towards the bedstead.

“Hold on for me,” he said, and Toby curled his hands around the metal rails, turning his head to press his mouth to Adil’s forearm.

“Bletchley 219,” he said weakly, once the receiver was held against his ear.

“Hello?” Oxley’s voice was tinny. “Hamilton, is that you? I’m in a ‘phone-box, line’s terrible. Friend get in alright? We’re heading to The White Bear at nine and I thought you might bring him down. You owe me a pint for leaving me alone with Weston all weekend.”

One of Adil’s hands had crept between his legs.

“Yes – ah – n-nine o’clock. Fine.”

“Cheero, then.”

The line clicked and went silent.

“Nine o’clock?”

“Yes – the pub – _ah_ – ”

“Well,” Adil said pleasantly, taking back the receiver and leaving it dangling off the table, “That gives me ninety minutes to remind you who you belong to.”

* * *


	2. Seven Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When a night out has an unexpected end, Adil must deal with the fallout. Modern AU.

* * *

_Friday_

“You could meet us later,” Toby said, leaning so far across the bar he was in danger of falling off his stool. “I’ll text you where we end up.”

“I won’t finish till two.”

“I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Sit properly, you’ll break your neck.” Adil slid him a fresh gin and tonic. “And don’t proposition me on duty.”

Toby winked. He was wearing his earring, and the polo shirt Adil had given him for Christmas which had cost a week’s wages. He looked younger out of his suit, the lines of him softly sketched.

“I’m going to finish my shift, go up to your room, fall asleep in your bed, and when you come crashing back at six a.m. I’ll just be getting up for my train.” He touched his hand around the glass. “Enjoy yourself. You’ve earned it.”

***

_Saturday_

His head flopped against Freddie’s shoulder, eyes half-lidded.

“I couldn’t bring him through the front like this.”

Adil took his other arm and they heaved him through the dark kitchen.

“He hasn’t taken something?”

“MI6 do random drug testing. He’d never risk it.”

Freddie stopped to catch his breath and Adil took most of Toby’s weight. He was grey-skinned, cold with sweat. Tobacco stench clung to his clothes.

“I practically fell over him behind the smoking area. I thought he’d already come home.”

The lobby was silent as they waited for the lift.

“I’ll sit up with him till I leave for my train,” Adil said, brushing back the lank hair. “He might be sick. Can you text me when he’s awake to let me know he’s okay?”

“I’ve never seen him like this,” Freddie said. “Perhaps his liver’s finally gone on strike.”

***

_Sunday_

When he arrived for his shift at quarter to eleven, Toby was still in bed.

“How’s the patient?”

“Surviving.” He had a tired, stretched-elastic smile. “How was home? How was the party?”

“Loud. Thirty ten-year-olds in one room is no joke. Everyone sends love, by the way.”

Adil leant down to kiss him, but Toby rolled onto his side and got out of bed.

“I’m hopping in the shower,” he said. At the bathroom door he turned around. “When I got back yesterday, did you and I – do anything?”

“Toby, you could barely hold your own head up.” Adil sat up on the bed. “It scared me a bit, seeing you like that.”

“I’m sorry. Must be turning into a lightweight.” He twisted around the doorframe, pulled the cord of the light. “I don’t want to make you late.”

***

_Monday_

_Mr G’s switched me to the early shift. Room service and Killing Eve later? :) x_

The reply didn’t come until mid-afternoon.

_I’m swamped, going to stay late. Have a good night off x_

***

_Tuesday_

The shower was running when Adil let himself in.

“Your knees,” he said when Toby came out of the bathroom. The skin was torn, dark with bruising.

“Must’ve stacked it Friday night,” Toby said. “You know what I’m like.”

***

_Wednesday_

“I’m hosting VIPs at table seven.” Freddie picked lint from his cuff. “Just charge everything to my tab.”

“Do you think – ” Adil put down the shaker – “Toby’s been quiet this week?”

“Haven’t really seen him. Whenever I knock he’s in the bloody shower.”

***

_Thursday_

“I think I cheated.”

He had his back to the bed, bent over the crossword in the _Evening Standard_. His pencil hovered, as though he’d simply been sounding out a clue.

“Last weekend. The club.”

Adil turned off the television. “Did someone kiss you?” he asked, when Toby didn’t speak again. Perhaps he’d been so drunk it’d taken him a few seconds to push them away.

“I can’t remember.”

“Did you flirt with someone? Give someone your number?”

“I can’t remember.”

He felt winded. “Toby, can you look at me please.”

He faced him, a thin line grooving his brow. Adil remembered the beginnings of that line, how, after his first week at MI6, he’d traced it with his thumb across the wearied forehead.

“I remember finding Stan’s mates.” Toby looked ill in the glare of the overhead light. “After that there’s just black space.”

Adil thought of the clammy skin, the sagging body. “Did you take a drink from anyone?”

“We were buying rounds. It wasn’t personal, I swear.”

“No, I mean – is there a chance someone could’ve put something in it?”

“Why would someone put something in it?”

How had he not thought of it when he’d seen him, sparked out and filthy on Freddie’s shoulder? But then Toby didn’t visit the grotty bars Adil had started in; Freddie got them into cocktail lounges, private gigs, invite-only nightclubs. They were exclusive, sharply-managed. They were safe.

Toby was looking at his hands. “When I woke up on Saturday I had a lump on the back of my head. And I remembered this feeling of – bumping back against something. Solid, like a wall. Just a kind of bump, bump, bump, over and over.” He was tugging at his ring. “And my throat – so I thought perhaps we’d been – _overzealous_ when I got back.” He looked up. “But then you said we hadn’t done anything.”

“Nothing. I promise you.”

Toby knelt in front of the bed. Adil felt the touch of him at his ankles, then it disappeared, as though he didn’t believe it might still be permitted.

“I swore I’d never be like him.” His face was tight, frightened. “I don’t want anyone else. I’ve never wanted anyone else. I don’t know how it happened.”

He should’ve gone with him. He should’ve missed his train and been with him when he woke.

“What happened wasn’t cheating, Toby.”

“We can’t know if I can’t remember.”

Perhaps he thought cheating would be easier to bear. “It wasn’t cheating, sweetheart.”

“You always think the best of me.”

“Because you’re not like him.”

He cupped Toby’s head, as though to share the weight with him, and Toby curved forward against him, neck stretching whitely beneath his damp hair.

* * *


	3. Another Language

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With great power comes great responsibility, and Lord Hamilton must lead The Halcyon into a new world.

* * *

The best man was to be the bride’s brother, the surviving son of the Earl of Melton, who had only met the groom once and afterwards remarked to his sister at the bar that if the war had taken the cream of their generation, perhaps Lord Hamilton might yet rise to the top of the jug. Adil refreshed their champagne, and Lady Anne thanked him dazedly, as though still in shock at her good fortune. The ring clinked against her glass.

“I can’t think why he doesn’t sell up,” said her brother. “It’s perfect for flats. You could find a nice house in Belgravia for when you’re in town.”

“He wants to make a go of it,” she said, and as she spoke of him her face opened, and Adil thought, not without pain, he might at last have met someone who loved him almost as much as he did. “For his brother.”

***

The columns of St George’s, Hanover Square stretched greyly above the Rolls Royce, towards a sky blank with snow. The dress was her sister’s, married before the war when it was still possible to buy silk by the yard; Lady Hamilton’s dressmaker had taken it up and garnished it, and between them they had saved enough coupons for the veil to fall like liquid to her waist.

“Don’t walk too quickly,” Lady Hamilton had instructed. “I can’t bear a bride who _scuttles_.”

At the altar she was given to him, and they were pinned there together by the weight of hundreds of eyes. He smiled at her, his face very white, and when she saw he was as frightened as she was, she was able to smile back. Somehow, she had won the grand prize without even realising she was in the game.

***

His mother had wanted to give them the Royal Suite, but he refused to lie in any bed of his father’s, so he stood now at the window of the Mayfair Suite, looking out across Hyde Park, the lamps blinking at him as though confused to see him there. In his hands he turned the cigarette case which had been Anne’s wedding gift – sterling silver, from Asprey, the sort of thing he would’ve chosen himself, and engraved inside the lid:

_To my Husband on our Wedding Day_   
_From your Anne_   
_1 st December 1945_

His Anne. In church, she had vowed to obey him. In law, he owned her. He held the shape of her life in his hands.

“You looked lovely today,” he said to her when she came out of the bathroom, unarmoured for him. He was terrified of hurting her.

“You must tell me if you want to stop,” he said. He touched her cold fingers.

She sat tentatively on the bed. “And you must tell me – if there’s something I’m not doing quite right, or – ”

He kissed her, and put his face in her neck, and thought of Adil as he made her his wife.

***

She’d left Cambridge for Bletchley in ’44, and when he’d found her crying about her brother in the library, he’d bought her a cup of tea, even though he was terribly clever and six years older and could’ve had tea with anyone he wanted. When she next saw him in the library, he was thinner and paler and rigid with grief, and when she offered him her handkerchief, she wanted to take the shattered pieces of him and keep them safe until a bolder, prettier girl could mend them for him.

Now he was teaching her to drive, and let her have her own chequebook, and spoke with her about books and plays and music, and when she was asked to be patroness of a charity for abused children, he hadn’t told her it was unsuitable, but had offered the restaurant for their gala dinner. As a husband, he was rather shy; he approached her each Saturday evening, polite, embarrassed, and she would stroke his hair where it tickled her shoulder and try not to hold him too tightly.

***

He sat alone at his table, the ashtray overflowing. There was no singer tonight, in case her voice travelled and disturbed the Mayfair Suite.

Adil’s back was towards him. His uniform hung loosely, bunching when he reached for a clean glass. His body was lean and sharp and closed. They hadn’t spoken since the night before the wedding.

“Lord Hamilton.” Mr Garland appeared at his shoulder. “They’re ready for you.”

In the Mayfair Suite Anne was sobbing, the sheets bloodied, and the midwife was cradling both children.

“A boy for Daddy and a girl for Mummy,” she announced, triumphant in the neatness of their achievement.

***

Adil slipped away after the champagne toast. He was sat at his desk, the two cots beside him, looking at the children as though if he turned his head away they might be gone when he looked back.

“Duty dispatched,” Adil said. Toby flinched, and Adil found there was some pleasure in it.

“We’re calling the girl Georgina. For Anne’s late brother George.”

“And your heir?”

“Freddie,” he said after a moment. Adil felt a flicker of shame. It was unkind to do this now.

“I’ve had a letter from Emma. She’s in New York now, at the Gramercy Park Hotel. There’s a job for me if I want it.”

“And do you want it?”

“You know what I want.”

Toby was still. When he raised his head his face was worn with the strain.

“I can’t be like him,” he said. “After what she’s done for me…”

He had known the blow was coming, and it only made him angrier at this stinking country, for what it had taken from them and what it would do to the torn, spent girl behind the closed bedroom door.

“Tell me – ” He nodded at the cots – “What if he turns out like us? What if _she_ does?”

“Perhaps the world will be different.” He looked down at his children. “Perhaps they’ll be braver.”

* * *


	4. Bright Young Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Building your empire is far pleasanter with Toby Hamilton to come home to. 1920s AU.

* * *

The genius of the bar at The Ritz was its sense of existing permanently in the early evening, in that brief suspension before the pendulum swings back from day to night; the night and its potential quivering, as yet unshaped, just beyond the next cocktail, and as long as one remained there, cocooned in clean golden light, time remained unspent, unwasted, an unreleased breath. Even at half past four, with the ladies in the Palm Court still settled with afternoon tea, Adil felt he would step out of the hotel into dusk, the shop windows along Piccadilly aglow and patching the pavement.

“The way I see it,” he said, catching a waiter’s eye, “It’s a question of confidence. In the product, in the brand – your clientele wants to know they’re getting quality liquor, no bathtub in sight.”

“Bourbon on the rocks,” O’Hara said. Adil shook his head when the waiter turned to him; it was for clients, not him, to get tight.

“We’ll start in Illinois, in time for Thanksgiving,” he pressed. “By next Christmas we’ll be supplying the entire Midwest.”

O’Hara sat back, the tip of his cigar a lizard’s eye, flaring orange across the table. “What’s my cut?”

“Twenty-five percent.”

The eye blackened, crackled, flared again. “I want thirty-five.”

“The distillery’s only getting twenty-seven.”

“For them it’s pin-money.” He accepted his bourbon. “This is why I don’t work with middlemen.”

“I prefer ‘supplier’. Twenty-eight.”

“Thirty-three.”

“Thirty.”

“Thirty-two.”

“Thirty.”

“Thirty-one.”

Adil needed him, and O’Hara knew it.

“Thirty-one,” he agreed, and the cigar glittered in triumph. He held out his hand. “God bless America.”

***

The house on Flood Street had been acquired at a bargain price from a baronet hit hard by death duties, and in fine weather they would walk to Chelsea Embankment Gardens and watch the rowers’ oars scoring the surface of the Thames. A charlady came three mornings a week, and he sent his washing out, but he kept no live-in servants, and he still found himself walking from room to room, hovering in each doorway, hardly daring to touch the spoils of his success.

He could hear the gramophone from the hall.

“This is a nice surprise,” he said. Toby was lying on the drawing-room sofa, curtains drawn, the right side of his face disappearing into the cushions, profile as neat and patrician as a postage stamp.

“You’ll take my key back one of these days.”

He seemed disinclined to move, so Adil sat on the floor and kissed what he could reach of his mouth. Even with the music he could hear the dry rattle of his breath.

“How’s the chest?”

“I shouldn’t have taken the tube. We were packed in like sardines at Green Park.” He reached out, smoothed Adil’s lapel. “How was the meeting?”

Adil allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. “We launch in Chicago in November.”

Toby smiled. “Aren’t you clever,” he said softly. “I knew you and Joe would hit it off.”

“After Christmas, once the first payments are in, I thought we could look for a place in the country for weekends.”

Clean air would do him good. There had been fog the night they’d met, a week after the Armistice, the pub gritty with cigarettes and the tarry smoke from the oil lamps. He’d been in uniform, three stars on his sleeve, band of the Intelligence Corps around his arm, and, when he’d got closer, the ribbon of the Military Cross beside the wound stripe on his chest. Adil didn’t usually go for officer types, much less _wounded heroes_ , but he’d heard him wheezing at ten paces, and when he’d offered him a light, and the officer’s hands had been shaking so badly Adil had had to take his wrist between his thumb and forefinger to hold it steady, Adil had met his eyes and wanted to say _we’re through the worst of it, it can never be as bad again_.

“I’ve a dinner tonight,” he said now, getting up to turn on the lamp. “There’s a new nightclub opening on the Strand and they’re looking for a supplier. Why don’t you come? You can be our touch of class.”

“Turn it off,” Toby said sharply.

He turned back, and saw Toby had sat up. The skin beneath his right eye was angry. He looked away, face closed, and Adil worked to keep hold of the delicate stem of his temper.

“Was that him?”

“Don’t fuss.”

“Did he put his hands on you again?”

“I spoke out of turn.”

Adil sat on the arm of the sofa and turned the proud face towards him. “I’m glad you came here.”

Toby scowled, struggling to arrange his face to hide his pleasure.

“I told Mother I’d stay at my club, so you can have me for this dinner if you want me.” He stood up, all briskness and breeding. “Black tie or white?”

“You tell me. It’s Simpson’s.” Adil hoped he’d let him ice the eye before it swelled.

“We’ll survive with black. I’ll run you a bath, shall I?”

“You go in first. I’ll follow you up.”

His tread was slow on the stairs, and Adil heard him pause on the landing to regain his breath. When the bathroom door closed, Adil took the needle off the record and moved silently into the hall.

“Mr Garland, it’s Mr Joshi,” he said once the operator connected him. Garland managed his warehouses by the docks, and had once got him and Toby out of a tight spot when an indiscretion had been witnessed on the steps of the Flood Street house. As profits increased and the business expanded, it was proving rather useful to have an associate unafraid of dirtying his hands.

“I wonder if you might take care of something for me,” Adil said. He heard the water running. “Halcyon Hotel, out Mayfair way. Owned by a Lord Hamilton. I’m afraid the old boy’s been forgetting himself.” _Touching what’s mine._ “I think it’s time for a changing of the guard.”

* * *


	5. The Whole Nine Yards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain Hamilton is in need of a new soldier-servant. First World War AU.

* * *

“You’ll never guess,” said Ponsonby, backside blocking the light as he climbed down into the dugout.

Hamilton pulled the candle across the table. Hawgrip wrote the most extraordinary letters to his wife; whenever he got leave they seemed to be at it like rabbits. And he couldn’t be much younger than sixty.

“Smithson’s been sent down the line.”

Hamilton looked up. Ponsonby’s round schoolboy face was practically orgasmic. He’d known boys like this at school, ears always on the flap.

“On whose authority?” he asked sharply. “What’s the matter with him?”

“Major Doyle.”

“ _Major Doyle_?” The candle-flame quivered. “Who the devil does he think he is, sending my men, my _soldier-servant_ down the line?”

“He didn’t have a choice.” Ponsonby was almost vibrating. “Smithson had a terrible turn, right outside B Company dugout.”

“If he’s been hit, I should’ve been informed.”

“He’s been hit alright. Or rather _clapped_.” He looked thrilled, appalled. “Courtesy of Madam Fifi’s.”

 _Well,_ Hamilton thought, once Ponsonby had scuttled off gleefully, _that’s one way of getting out of it._ Though perhaps not the way Mrs Smithson would’ve chosen.

He censored the remainder of Hawgrip’s letter, though in truth the only sensitive information was a rather ambitious description of what he intended to do to Mrs Hawgrip in their potting shed. Hawgrip was one of the last of the old professionals; he’d been with the battalion when Second Lieutenant Hamilton, in the expensive, beautifully-tailored uniform his mother had ordered from Jermyn Street, had shuffled along the duckboards to join A Company, in charge of a platoon of fifteen, when at school he hadn’t even been trusted to be a prefect. They’d sloshed their way through Loos, when the wind had changed and their own gas had blown back on them, through Pozières, through Arras, and soon, he thought wearily, they would tramp west, to Ypres, the same blackened scrub of land the battalion had fought over three years earlier.

“Captain Hamilton, sir.”

“Can’t I get a moment’s _bloody_ peace?”

“Sorry, sir.” Barker hovered at the mouth of the service dugout. “You asked me to call you for rifle inspection, sir.”

Hamilton checked his watch. “Blast.” He pushed aside the remaining letters. “Any trouble this morning?”

“They dropped a Minnie behind D Company, sir, just to check we was all awake.”

It always felt faintly emasculating, climbing up into the trench like this, looking up at his men from his burrow. It had been dry since they’d moved into the front line, but now the sky was scoured, colourless, made clean for the coming of the rain. The wet was worse than the heat; he’d seen men slip from the duckboards and drown in the mud, slimed hands unable to grip an arm or branch or rifle.

They were playing a crude game of cricket; someone had got hold of a plank of wood and Joshi, his back to the dugout, was bowling what looked like a conker. It was a fearsome throw, plenty of spin, but Hill blasted the conker over the wall of the trench into the tangled skeins of wire. The plank had swung up above Hill’s shoulder, above the parapet, and as the men cheered a rifle cracked from across No Man’s Land.

“Better wait till we’re behind the lines,” Hamilton said, once they had all straightened up again. He wondered if this was what his brother saw from the air, clusters of green-capped mushrooms ducking and swaying, rooted deep in the pitted earth.

Joshi turned around, and with the shadow of his helmet Hamilton couldn’t see his eyes.

“Sorry, sir,” he said, and joined the rest of the men unshouldering their rifles.

***

Ponsonby had commandeered all but one of their candles to dry his socks.

“I’m sorry about the light, or lack of,” Hamilton said, when Joshi reached the bottom of the ladder.

“Is this about the cricket, sir?”

“Cricket?” He groped back through the day. “Christ, no, I’d forgotten all about that. Though you’re quite the bowler.”

They sat down at the table, and Hamilton saw Joshi was trying not to squint through the gloom. He had a narrow, angular face, and the movement of the flame cast shapes on his skin.

“Have a drink?” Hamilton said, when he realised he’d been staring.

“Let me, sir.”

Joshi stood up and poured whiskey into two tin mugs. He handled the bottle deftly, didn’t slop it about the way Hamilton did in the dark of the morning, starved of sleep. He pushed a mug across the table; Hamilton reached for it too early, and covered Joshi’s cold fingers with his own cold fingers, and when he looked up he saw the candle made Joshi’s eyes silver like flares.

“Here’s luck,” he said.

Joshi took his hand away. “Here’s luck, sir.”

“You’ll know about Smithson,” Hamilton said, once they’d drank. “So you’ll know I’m in need of a soldier-servant. You’d be excused sentry duty, latrine duty – and I’d put a word in with the C.O., get you your lance-corporal stripes. Smithson would have his by now if it wasn’t for Madam Fifi’s.”

Joshi smiled. “You won’t find me in Madam Fifi’s, sir.”

 _No_ , Hamilton thought, looking away, _he wouldn’t need to pay to find someone willing_.

“I won’t give you much trouble,” he said. “It’s mostly keeping on top of the boots and the buttons. I always seem to be covered in mud – ” _and candlewax and blood and human insides –_ “just when the brigadier wants to see me. I leave terrible prints on his carpet.”

“Don’t worry, sir.” Joshi leant forward, splashed water into Hamilton’s empty mug. “I’ll keep you looked after.”

When he’d gone, Hamilton passed a hand over his face. He felt as though Joshi had knifed him. _I’ll keep you looked after._ Behind the lines, Joshi would have to give him a haircut, those fingers positioning his head, brushing the hair from his neck.

 _May as well go the whole nine yards_ , he thought, and drank what Joshi had given him.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've since expanded this AU into a full-length piece, so if you enjoyed, you can find more angst and romance in the trenches in my fic 'Rites of Spring' x


	6. Give Me The Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toby is used to biting his tongue. With Adil he doesn't have to. Set in the glory days between episodes 5 and 6.

* * *

Adil’s mouth is hot on his throat, his jaw, and his hand is clever and relentless as Toby clings at his back.

“Let me hear you.”

He’d put the wireless on for the nine o’clock news, but the news is coming and going and he isn’t listening to a word.

“Hear what?”

Trimmed, scrubbed nails scrape his scalp.

“You.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

He presses his mouth into Adil’s shoulder, hands slackening, letting Adil carry him through.

“No-one’s listening,” Adil says, once they’ve caught their breath. “There’s no ear against the door.”

Toby lies back on the bed, pictures his mother or Mr Garland or Mrs Hobbs in the room next door, glass against the wall.

“You give me the creeps when you say things like that.”

Adil leans over him, pushing Toby’s hair out of his eyes, and if it wouldn’t take too much effort Toby would reach up and trace the fine bones of his face.

“You’re purring.” Adil strokes behind his ear. “It’s quite charming.”

“Bugger off.”

He closes his eyes, and feels the mattress dip as Adil’s weight settles against him. The voice on the wireless is introducing a new play: a gentle comedy in seven scenes. If he could only reach the lamp –

“I do want to hear you,” Adil says.

“I haven’t said anything! Has all this sex sent your eardrums haywire?”

“I know you aren’t saying anything. That’s what _I_ ’m saying.” He finds the untucked hem of Toby’s shirt. “You don’t need to keep perfectly silent when we’re – ”

“Up to no good?”

He pinches his hip. “You’re allowed to…” He hesitates, soothing where he’d nipped. “Vocalise.”

They were missing the _dramatis personae_. “If I start _vocalising_ there’ll be more than an ear against the door.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Take it as you like. Now be quiet so I can listen.”

Another little pinch, and the sting is sweet and makes him wonder about Adil’s teeth.

The silence is prudence, he reasons, once the play is finished and Adil has been redressed, rekissed and swallowed by the blackout. Learnt from a decade in dormitories with seven other boys, the shoes of Mr Grant, the housemaster, obstructing the sliver of light at the bottom of the door, listening for whispers, sweet wrappers, the creak of the window-latch ( _Forbidden – The closing of dormitory windows at night at any time of year – Penalty four strokes_ ). In Winter Term they woke to blankets stiff with frost.

He’d learnt the facts of life from Mr Grant, known as The Grunter, for the sound he made wielding the cane. An agonising half-hour in his study with three other First-Formers – he saw them in batches, to prevent giggling – on man’s base impulses, what to expect from a good woman and to beware of in a bad, something muddling about locks and keys, and how when the key is wedded to the lock it isn’t unreasonable to apply a little pressure if from time to time the lock is disinclined to open. The Grunter, himself wifeless, had been aggressively apologetic, and Toby had stared at the desktop and wondered if sex is this excruciating how the poets wrote such drivel about it.

But on self-abuse The Grunter was clear. The emission of fluid was for the propagation of the species, and when it was emitted not within one’s wife, but within one’s single bed in the dark, biting the back of one’s hand, eyes fixed on the light below the door, an unborn child was destroyed; and God saw, and marked another sin beside one’s name, and when one heard about desperate, sonless men, approaching death without an heir, it was punishment for the souls they had spent in their youth. He’d thought of Freddie, burdened with the family line, and whether he too lay on his back after lights-out, fisting the sheets, working through pi’s decimal places, knowing God was watching and testing him, poised to record the coming sin. But sons were a nuisance, Toby would tell himself, reaching down guiltily, silently; he didn’t want a son anyway.

“I was passing through,” he says the next night, which is true in that he’d passed through his usual Underground stop to reach Paddington. “I’m not disturbing you, am I?”

Adil’s flat isn’t a flat at all, rather a dingy, draughty little room in the carcass of an old railwayman’s house. Toby can’t think of anything polite to say, except that any room is made nicer with Adil in it.

“Good day off?” he asks instead.

“Quiet. Slept in, wrote to my parents, picked up some shopping.” Adil’s eyes dart to the pile of washing on the room’s sole chair. “Would you like tea?”

“No, thank you. May I –?” He touches the top button of his coat.

Adil takes his briefcase from him, like a bellboy, and Toby kisses him before he can feel any more embarrassed at inviting himself into Adil’s private space.

“I don’t want you to think,” he says, drawing him towards the narrow bed, “that I don’t enjoy what we do. Silence is just – ” His hands reach Adil’s face, sharp with stubble – “force of habit.”

Adil removes his hands and kisses each palm. He pushes the heavy coat from Toby’s shoulders, hooks it on the back of the door, and when he slips his hands inside Toby’s jacket it no longer feels like an act of service, but of being undressed.

“I don’t need _War and Peace_.” He leans close to his ear. “I want to know what you like. I want to know what feels good for you. I want to have you completely, everything you lock up in that brilliant brain.”

“I wouldn’t like to appear ridiculous.”

There’s too much of him, and too much of it deficient. He would disappoint him. It would erode them.

“Then just let me hear you breathe.” Adil touches his teeth to the skin below Toby's ear. “Let me hear you’re with me.”

Toby breathes out.

* * *


	7. For Ready Money

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Mr Joshi's play becomes the hit of the West End, he receives an intriguing proposition. Victorian AU.

* * *

“And be careful in the third act,” Adil said, putting away his notes. “When you come downstage with the diary – any further and you’ll miss your light.”

“It’s called a follow-spot, isn’t it? So let it follow me.” She caught his eye in the mirror, ruthlessly re-pinning her hair. “I’ll remember, darling, I promise, only do remind Miss Day to put her parasol down _before_ Mr Hill’s entrance; he has so few lines and it upsets him terribly when she upstages him.”

“I’ll speak with her,” Adil said, though Miss Day had enough trouble timing her own entrances without minding anyone else’s.

At the knock, Miss Garland dabbed her wrists briskly with scent, and slipped the three-carat diamond back onto her finger.

“Darling,” Lord Hamilton said, white roses in hand, “How marvellous you were.”

He kissed her, and when Adil turned politely away he saw another young man in the doorway, programme held across his chest. His smile was tight and embarrassed.

“This is the seventh time I’ve seen it and I still laugh about the cucumbers.” Lord Hamilton shook Adil’s hand vigorously. “Even my brother was amused and I assure you, few playwrights have accomplished that. Mr Joshi – my brother, Sir Toby Hamilton.”

The young man stepped into the room. “Very well done,” he said, grasping Adil’s outstretched hand. Black tails, white shirt, black hair, white face, black eyes; a half-shaded sketch. “I don’t know how you do it. Both of you.” He took back his hand and kissed Miss Garland’s cheek. “My brother’s gain will be theatre’s loss, I’m afraid.”

“We’re going on to Wiltons for some supper,” Lord Hamilton said, helping Miss Garland into her furs. “We’ve an American hack desperate for an interview.”

“ _Peer’s Betrothed Treads the Boards_ ,” Miss Garland said drily. “Won’t you come, darling? Drop him a Broadway hint?”

Adil glanced at Sir Toby, flicking disinterestedly through his programme.

“Another night,” he said. “You’re his story. I’ll have Miss Loughlin put these flowers in water.”

“I’ll meet you at the cloakroom,” Sir Toby said, and stepped out without taking Adil’s leave.

***

_1 st March 1895_

_Mr. Joshi,_

_Please accept my sincerest congratulations on last night’s performance. It is surely the cleverest, funniest, most irreverent new play I have seen since my return to London, and the perfect swansong for our Miss Garland._

_Would you consider joining me at my club after tomorrow’s matinée_ _? Please find my card enclosed for the address._

_Faithfully,  
Sir Toby Hamilton_

“My,” Miss Garland said, gripping the dressing table, corset laces creaking, “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard Toby deploy so many adjectives.”

“What’s your opinion of him?”

“Well – ” She winced – “when Freddie introduced us I thought him arrogant – a little tighter please, Miss Loughlin – but he’s really just terribly shy. He can be rather sweet when he’s got his spines in. And quite brilliant, the youngest man the Foreign Office has ever had. Did something very secret very well in Southern Africa.”

Adil looked back at the note, its upright, neatly-blotted script. “Perhaps he’s lonely.”

Miss Garland straightened, breathing out gingerly. “Lonely and lovely to look at,” she said lightly.

***

“The Halcyon’s a beautiful theatre.”

“We were lucky to get it,” Adil said, shaking his head when Sir Toby offered his cigarette case. “Of course you must know the manager through Miss Garland?”

“Odd chap. One gets the feeling that behind those mild manners are nerves of iron.”

“You know, we were having trouble with a critic from _Tatler_ , then suddenly Mr Garland tells me he’s sailed back to France and shan’t bother us again. I didn’t dare ask.”

The lounge was emptying as the gentlemen went up to dress. Men who Adil had seen only as sketches in newspapers raised their hands, or nodded their heads, and Sir Toby raised and nodded back vaguely. He’d hardly looked away from Adil since they’d sat down, the slim, blank face flushed from the fire and the whiskey. By the gods, he could put it away; he must’ve had half the bottle, yet the waiter kept diligently topping him off, and Adil supposed that as long as he could retire to his bedroom unassisted it made no odds to the club how soused he was when he got there.

“Miss Garland told me you were knighted at New Year. Congratulations.”

Sir Toby smiled that tight, embarrassed smile. “All nonsense, really. Cost me a packet in new stationery.”

There was still something of the sixth-former about him, that affected carelessness, forcing back his pleasure. Miss Garland was right; he _was_ rather lovely, cool and clever and praise-starved. Like Eve before the Fall.

“I hope my note didn’t make you feel _summoned_ ,” he was saying, “but I was quite tongue-tied when we met. I feel very dull beside you theatre people.”

“You needn’t,” Adil said. “Being Sir Toby Hamilton is something rather special.”

They looked at each other across the table. Then Sir Toby took a final drag of his cigarette, and leant forward to drop it into the ashtray, so when he looked back at Adil it was through a fine curl of smoke.

“When our father died, my brother very kindly gifted me a portion of the estate.”

 _A portion_ , Adil noted. _Not half._

“I made several investments before I went abroad and I’ve, ah, returned to find they’ve done rather well.” He hadn’t sat back. “I meant what I wrote. The play’s a remarkable achievement. I’d like to help your next to even greater success. In memory of my father.”

“Did he enjoy the theatre?”

“No.” Now Sir Toby’s smile was arrogant, and Adil liked it better. “I don’t care about making money from it; my other investments are doing that. I like your work. I like you.”

***

_3 rd March 1895_

_Dear Sir Toby,_

_I have given much thought to your proposition. Perhaps you will come to tomorrow night’s performance as my guest, and allow me to give you a little supper after at my flat._

_Yours,  
Adil Joshi_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's read, commented or left kudos on this series! It's been a lovely way to get back into writing and back into The Halcyon. I hope it's been enjoyable for you too x


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